Spy drone may provide little intelligence to Iran

WASHINGTON 
The Iranian capture of a high-tech, stealth U.S. drone shines a light on the American spying mission there, but probably doesn't tell Tehran much that it didn't already know, a senior U.S. official said.

The RQ-170 Sentinel was providing surveillance over Iran and didn't just accidentally wander away from the Afghanistan border region, as first suggested. The official said Wednesday that the Iranians will no doubt be able to tell where the aircraft flew. A bigger U.S. concern, the official said, was that the Iranians are likely to share or sell whatever they have recovered of the aircraft to the Chinese, Russians or others. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the mission.

Experts and officials acknowledge that there is no self-destruct mechanism on the Sentinels - which are used both by the military and the CIA for classified surveillance and intelligence gathering missions.

Iranian state radio reported Wednesday that the drone was deep inside Iran's airspace, flying over an eastern town famous for Persian carpets and saffron when it was detected by Iranian forces over the eastern town of Kashmar, about 140 miles from the Afghan border. The radio report said the craft was downed by Iranian armed forces.

It did not speculate as to why the drone flew over that town.

The radio added that Iran will soon broadcast video footage of the downed drone.

U.S. officials said that while they have enough information to confirm that Iran does have the wreckage, they said they are not sure what the Iranians will be able to glean technologically from what they found. It is unlikely that Iran would be able to recover any surveillance data from the aircraft.

Iran first reported the downing on Sunday but did not say when the incident happened. At the time, the official IRNA news agency said Iran's armed forces had shot it down - a claim later rejected by U.S. officials who said the drone crashed over the weekend but that there was no indication it had been shot down.

Still, U.S. officials said that the U.S. employs a range of capabilities to gather information about Iran, particularly its nuclear program. As a result, officials said this type of mission is probably no surprise to Tehran and therefore is not seen by the U.S. as a diplomatic tipping point.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss classified information, have said the drone and other stealth craft like it have spied on Iran for years from a U.S. air base in Afghanistan, and other bases in the region.

According to these officials, the U.S. built up the air base in Shindand, Afghanistan, with an eye to keeping a long-term presence there to launch surveillance missions and even special operations missions into Iran if deemed necessary in the future. Such continued use would be predicated on a security arrangement with the government of Afghanistan, after U.S. troops draw down, the officials said.

At this point, while the U.S. has broad contingency plans to put a small special operations team into Iran if needed in the future, U.S. officials said they believe the president has not sanctioned any such action. Multiple officials said there is little appetite for putting U.S. troops in harm's way inside Iran, such as the Navy SEALs' lightning raid into Pakistan earlier this year to target Osama bin Laden.